Escabeche Oriental

Yucatecan turkey in a sour broth built on charred chilli, bitter orange, and a great deal of allspice

Origin: Valladolid, Yucatán, Mexico

From the journey of Allspice.

The name misleads. This is not the vinegar-pickled escabeche of Spain, and oriental here means eastern in the strictly local sense: the east of the Yucatán peninsula, around the town of Valladolid, which claims the dish. What it is instead is turkey poached and then charred, served in a sour, clear, aromatic broth built on a recado, one of the wet spice pastes that hold the whole Yucatecan kitchen together. Yucatán grinds its spices on the metate into a paste rather than sprinkling them dry, and the pastes are named by colour: recado rojo red with achiote, recado negro black with burnt chilli, and the recado blanco or de escabeche that this dish takes, pale and dominated by allspice, black pepper, and oregano. Allspice is native here. The peninsula sits inside the wild range of Pimenta dioica, and Mexico calls the berry pimienta gorda, fat pepper, a name that distinguishes it from the black peppercorn beside it in the same paste. Its presence in Yucatecan cooking is not a colonial import but a continuity: the Maya were using it long before any recado had a Spanish name. The sourness comes from naranja agria, the bitter Seville orange, which is the Yucatecan acid of choice and does something neither lemon nor vinegar manages. Its juice is sharp and faintly resinous, and against the allspice it produces the particular sour-warm balance that makes the dish recognisable.

Ingredients

Meat

  • 1.5 kg turkey thighs and drumsticks, or chicken pieces

Broth

  • 2 litres water
  • 2 whole onions, one halved and one thickly sliced
  • 1 whole head of garlic, halved crosswise and charred
  • 2 tsp salt, plus more to taste

Recado

  • 2 tbsp allspice berries
  • 1 tbsp black peppercorns
  • 2 tbsp dried Mexican oregano
  • 6 cloves garlic, charred on a dry comal
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 0.5 tsp ground cloves
  • 1 whole cinnamon stick, broken

Souring

  • 200 ml bitter orange juice, or 150 ml orange juice with 50 ml lime juice

To Finish

  • 4 whole chiles xcatic or banana peppers, charred whole
  • 3 tbsp lard or neutral oil

To Serve

  • 12 whole corn tortillas, to serve

Method

  1. Char the halved head of garlic, the recado garlic cloves, and the whole chillies on a dry comal or heavy pan until blackened in patches and softened.
  2. Toast the allspice, peppercorns, oregano, and cinnamon in the same dry pan for about a minute until fragrant, then grind them to a powder.
  3. Grind or blend the toasted spices with the charred garlic, cumin, and cloves and just enough bitter orange juice to make a thick paste.
  4. Put the turkey in a large pan with the water, the halved onion, the charred garlic head, and the salt. Bring slowly to the boil and skim.
  5. Stir half the recado into the broth, reduce to a bare simmer, cover, and cook for 50 minutes to an hour until the turkey is tender.
  6. Lift the meat out and pat it dry. Strain the broth, skim off the fat, and return it to the pan with the remaining bitter orange juice.
  7. Rub the remaining recado over the turkey pieces and sear them in the lard over a high heat until browned and slightly crisp at the edges.
  8. Soften the sliced onion briefly in the same pan, then add it and the charred chillies to the broth and simmer for five minutes.
  9. Taste the broth and adjust the salt and the bitter orange. It should be markedly sour with the allspice warm behind it.
  10. Serve the turkey in shallow bowls with the broth ladled over, an onion and a chilli each, and warm tortillas.

Notes

Bitter orange (naranja agria) is sold by Latin American grocers and frozen juice is entirely acceptable. The orange and lime substitute gets close but lacks the faint resinous edge. Chile xcatic is a pale yellow Yucatecan chilli, mild and aromatic. Banana peppers or Hungarian wax peppers are the nearest substitute. Chicken works throughout and needs about 35 minutes rather than an hour. Mexican oregano is a different plant from Mediterranean oregano (Lippia graveolens rather than Origanum vulgare) and is more citrus-scented. It matters here. Serve with tortillas, pickled red onion, and habanero salsa on the table.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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